It wouldn’t be a Google phone launch without some kind of glitch making headlines. This time the Google Pixel 9a is suffering from an unusual glitch in the selfie camera, with users reporting a weird gray flickering in low-light environments.
Nobody likes it when their brand new phone starts having problems. But having replicated this particular bug for myself, I’d say that it’s not actually something to worry all that much about.
It’s a little irritating, there’s no doubt about it, but this isn’t on the same league as something like a vibrating ultrawide camera lens on the Galaxy S25 Ultra.
What is the Pixel 9a’s selfie bug?
The issue with the Pixel 9a’s selfie camera pops up when you’re in a poorly lit room. You may notice that the edges of the viewfinder will start flickering a gray-ish tint in the darker spots of the screen. In my case this was the bottom corner of the image.
The flickering is a lot more noticeable when your screen brightness is ramped up to the max. But it is still visible, albeit slightly harder to spot, when things are a little dimmer — which it likely will be if you have auto-brightness switched on.
From what I can tell from my own testing, this flickering only affects the camera interface itself. The photo I took while this was happening didn’t actually show anything out of the ordinary — though the automatic Night Sight processing may have played a part.
The flickering also didn’t appear when I switched the camera to video mode. Interestingly it also vanished when I moved to a dark room, only reappearing after I opened the curtains to let a little more light into the room.
Why you shouldn’t be worried
It’s not just me that noticed Pixel 9a selfies seem to be coming out with no visible issues. This was noted over on Reddit, and it means that whatever is causing the issue isn’t something you should really be concerned about.
A different user even claimed that uninstalling the most recent Pixel Camera update caused the flickering to vanish. That suggests that this is purely a software issue, which should be fixed in a future version of the app.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s still an annoying problem to have. Particularly since Google Pixels are so well known for having post-launch problems like this. But in the grand scheme of things, a minor software issue that doesn’t actually affect photo quality isn’t something any of us should lose sleep over.
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